The “Potsdam Giants” of Frederick I
He might have been portly, but the Prussian king Frederick I (1657 – 1713) liked his men tall. And in uniform. So much so, in fact, that he once confessed, “The most beautiful girl or woman in the world would be a matter of indifference to me, but tall soldiers they are my weakness.” To satisfy his penchant, the militarily obsessed Prussian monarch created an army of giants: the Grand Grenadiers of Potsdam.
These “Potsdam Giants” never actually saw action. Instead, they were put to ceremonial use to the gleeful delight of their paymaster. In fact, it seems Frederick relied on them a great deal for his emotional wellbeing. When he was particularly upset he would order a couple of hundred grenadiers to lead a bizarre procession around the palace—consisting of tall turbaned moors and an enormous tame bear—to cheer him up. And the taller the better; to show how much their appearance was valued, Frederick adjusted the soldiers’ pay scales according to their height.
Frederick went to extreme lengths to procure recruits. In 1730, the Prussian ambassador to London tricked his footman, Irishman James Kirkland, into boarding a ship bound for Prussia. Kirkland unwittingly went on to become the tallest member of the regiment. But he wasn’t the only one to be pressganged. The most sinister story comes from when the Prussian major general Baron von Hompesch spotted an enormous German carpenter in the German town of Jülich.
Hompesch ordered him to make a large packing crate measuring six-foot, six inches; the same height as the carpenter himself. When the job was complete, Hompesch refused to pay for it, saying the crate was too small. Desperate not to lose Hompesch’s custom, the carpenter climbed inside to prove the dimensions were correct at which point a couple of henchmen dashed in from outside and sealed the container shut with the carpenter inside. They forgot one small detail though: air holes. When the box was finally opened it transpired that the poor man had suffocated en route.
The Potsdam Giants didn’t enjoy the longest innings. No longer seeing the point in paying for the upkeep of a ceremonial regiment numbering 2,500 men, Frederick I’s son, Frederick the Great, dissolved the Potsdam Giants in 1805. The regiment’s lifespan may have been short. But as the product of Prussia’s first experiment with eugenics, they left a long historical shadow.